Audience Theory

Three questions to be asked;

1) Why do audience choose to consume certain texts?
2) How do they consume texts?
3) What happens when they consume texts?

There are three theories of audience that we can apply to help us come to a better understanding about the relationship between texts and audience.

1)The Effects model or Hypodermic Model
2)The Uses and Gratifications Model
3)Reception Theory

Other evidence for Effects Model

The "Frankfurt School" theorised in the 1920's and 30's that the mass media acted to restrict and control audience to the benefit of corporate capitalism and governments.

Key examples sited as causing or being contributory factors are:

"Clockwork Orange" (1971) in a number of rapes and violent attacks.

"Severance" (2006) in the murder of Simon Everitt.

-In each case there was a media and political outcry for the texts to be banned.
-Laws were changed, films banned and newspaper demanded the burnings of DVD's.
-Subsequently it was found that no case could be proven to demonstrate a link between the text and the violent acts.

The effects model contributes to moral panics whereby:
-The media produces inactivity, make us into students who wont pass their exams or "couch potatoes" who makesno effort to get a job.
-The media produces violent "copycat" behaviour or mindless shopping in response to advertisement- "Shake and Vac Advert"

The Uses and Gratifications Model

-It is unclear that there is any link between the consumption of violent media texts and violent imitative behaviour.
-It is also said the Effects model is flawed as many people do watch text and appear not to be influenced.
-Therefore a new theory is necessary.
-This is called the Uses and Gratifications Model.

This is the opposite of the Effects Model!
-The audience is active
-The audience uses the text and is not used by it
-The audience uses the text for it own gratification or pleasure.

Here, the power lies with the audience and NOT the producers. The theory emphasises what audiences do with media texts- how and why they use them. Far from being duped by the media the audience is free to reject, use or play with media meanings as they see fit.

Audiences therefore use media texts to gratify needs for:
-Diversion
-Escapism
-Information
-Pleasure
-Comparing relationships and lifestyles with one's own.
-Sexual simulation

The audience is in control and comsumption of the media helps people with issues such as:
-Learning
-Emotional Satisfaction
-Relaxation
-Helps with issues of personal identity
-Helps with issues of social identity
-Helps with issues of aggression and violence

Controversially the theory suggests the consumption of violent images can be helpful rather than harmful. The theory suggests that audiences act out their violent impulses through the consumption of media violence. The audience's inclination towards violent is therefore sublimated and they are less likely to commit violent acts.

Reception Theory

Given that the Effects Model and the Uses and Gratificiations Model have their problems and limitations, a different approach to audiences was developed by the academic Stuart Hall at Birmingham University in the 1970's.

This considered how texts were encoded with meaning by producers and then decoded by audience.

The Theory suggests that:
-When a producer constructs a text, it is encoded with a meaning or message that the producer wishes to convey to the audience.
-In some instances, audiences will correctly decode the message or meaning and understand what the producer was trying to say.
-In some instances the audience will either reject or fail to correctly understand the message.

Hall identified three types of audience readings (or decoding) of texts:
1) Dominant
2)Negotiated
3)Oppositional

Dominant
Where audience decodes the message as the producer wants you to decode them and broadly agrees with it.
E.g Watching a political speech and agreeing with it.

Negotiated
Where the audience accepts, rejects or refines elements of the text in light of previously held views.
E.g Neither agreeing or disagreeing with the political speech or being disinterested.

Oppositional
Where the dominant meaning is recognised but rejected for Cultural, Political or Ideological reasons.
E.g Total rejection of the political speech and active opposition.